Sick of buying cheap ass quality clothes in expensive Palermo boutiques? Stop spending all of your pesos and just go straight to the source. Even though the clothes in Buenos Aires tend to easily rip to the seams in the matter of weeks, you may as well buy it in all its poor quality glory on Calle Avellaneda in Flores and Floresta. Within a 50 block radius and a whopping 1600 clothing stores, Avellaneda puts the shops in Once and the outlets on Cordoba to shame.
The epicenter of shopping madness is located on Avellaneda and Nazca, where you’ll find hoards of women, men, children and babies in strollers shopping for clothing and accessories at wholesale prices. Stores sell the items por mayor, wholesale-bulk shopping, and por menor, basically regular retail. The majority of the stores will display in the window if it is por mayor, which indicates the minimum number of articles you have to buy (generally 5 or 6 items min.). Other stores, may have two prices – the cheaper price being the bulk purchase, and more expensive, the por menor retail price.
With 1600 stores, it may be difficult to know exactly which stores are worth it. Luckily, La Nacion’s blog ranks the top stores on Avellaneda, make sure to read the comments for more tips. Two of the favorites include:
Nare (Avellaneda 3090): You’ll notice that Nare offers the same women’s clothing as the stores on Avenida Cabildo and Santa Fe.
Glow (Helguera 426): Another women’s clothing store that specializes in shirts. There is a minimum of 5 different pieces per person so come with enough efectivo (cash).
These stores, like most, are open Monday – Friday from 8/8.30 – 6pm and Saturday from 8.30 – 2pm. Since this place is visited by the masses, try to get there early to dodge some of the insanity. Seriously, there are a shitload of people – think rush hour on the subway, with people scrambling Supermarket Sweep style trying to stuff dozens of items into huge industrial-sized garbage bags. Oh yeah, and be prepared to wait in line to enter some of the more popular stores – you may be in Floresta, but THIS IS ARGENTINA and you can’t avoid the infamous line.
